Yesterday's quote reminds me of the story of General Kreipe quoting an ode of Horace and Patrick Leigh Fermor surprising him by completing it. Fermor said it was "as if we all had drunk at the same fountains long ago, as if the war suddenly had ceased to be ..."Christopher Benfrey describes it in his NYT review of Artemis Cooper's book Patrick Leigh Fermor: An Adventure as "a bond of civility amid the carnage."